Death, Unchartered. Dorothy Van Soest

than I expected,” I said.

      “God works in mysterious ways,” Pastor Paul said. “Maybe P.S. 457 is your calling like this ministry in the Bronx is mine.”

      I winced at his religious assumption and tried to hide my discomfort by reaching for a slice of watermelon and dropping it on the plate in front of me. I poked it with my fork, cut off a piece, and brought it up to my mouth.

      Linnea Winston gave her husband an indulgent smile and an affectionate pat on his arm. “Paul likes to believe we’re here because of divine intervention,” she said. “He doesn’t want to admit that no other church in the denomination was willing to hire a black pastor, much less one with a white wife.” She ran her fingers through her wavy blond hair.

      “And two black sons who might want to date their daughters.” Jake, who was a month shy of turning seventeen, laughed like he thought what he’d said was hilarious.

      Fourteen-year-old Ronnie joined in. “What do you mean? We’re half Swedish, aren’t we?”

      “Yeah, and we’re probably both gay, too,” Jake countered. He shoved his hands in the pockets of his jean shorts and leaned back in his chair, laughing.

      Everyone cracked up. Frank and I had been told, before deciding to come to the Bronx, that Pastor Paul had been asked to leave his last church, in Connecticut, after he invited a gay couple to join the congregation. I’d liked this family even before meeting them, and now I liked them even more.

      “Hey,” Jake said, still laughing. “Be glad the Supreme Court finally declared our parents’ marriage legal.”

      “To us!” Ronnie lifted his glass of lemonade. “Thanks to Loving v. Virginia, we are bastard children no longer.” The two brothers toasted each other with a clink of their glasses.

      I couldn’t help but wonder what it must be like for them to navigate a world of prejudice, and if their joking was a way to disguise hurt and anger. But there was no hint of rancor in their humor. It even seemed pure in a way. I glanced at Frank, who was laughing as hard as anyone, knowing that if I told him what I was thinking, he’d accuse me of being too serious.

      “Enough,” Linnea said with a giggle. “Time to eat.”

      The laughter subsided as plates and bowls were passed around the table—hamburgers with pickles and onions on the side, potato chips, coleslaw, potato salad, and brownies.

      I took a bite of my hamburger. “Mmmmm, this is delicious. I don’t know how you do it.” I wiped the juice from my chin with the red and white checked napkin that matched the tablecloth.

      “Well, first you fire up the grill,” Jake said, laughing again.

      “No, I mean, how did you take this drab little patch of cracked concrete and make it into such a beautiful little sanctuary? And the parsonage,” I pointed toward the back door, “it’s so... so... normal.”

      “Nobody’s ever accused us of being normal before,” fourteen-year-old Ronnie cracked.

      “Tack så mycket to Linnea here.” Pastor Paul winked at his wife.

      “See what I mean?” Ronnie said. “You know any other black man who speaks Swedish?”

      Everyone laughed, me included. “I don’t mean normal, normal,” I said. “More like ordinary. No, I guess what I mean is that your home is such a contrast to everything else around here.”

      “We want you to think of it as yours while you’re here, right, Linnea?” Pastor Paul said.

      “A shelter from the storm,” she added with a smile.

      “So what do you think of P.S. 457,” Ronnie said. “I went there when we first moved here. I thought the building was falling apart around me.”

      I put my silverware down and held my head in my hands. “It was built for a thousand students,” I said, “and they’re expecting over twenty-five hundred. That’s more than twice the population of the town where I grew up. The playground is filled with mobile classrooms, and that still doesn’t solve the overcrowding.”

      “So how are they going to manage?” Pastor Paul said.

      “By running the school in two shifts,” I said. Everyone shook their heads and made tsk tsk sounds.

      “A way to make two schools out of one,” Linnea said.

      “Is Miss Huskings still the principal?” Ronnie asked. “She was one scary lady. And creepy?” He lifted his hands up in mock horror. “She used to roam the halls to check on what was going on. We were all afraid of her.”

      “I’m a bit intimidated by her, too,” I said. “I get the impression she’s supportive of the teachers but that you’d better not cross her.”

      “You can always quit,” Frank said.

      I stared at him. Quit? I picked up my hamburger, licked away the mustard oozing from the side of the bun, and bit into it. Three years of marriage and four years of dating before that, and my husband still didn’t have a clue who I was.

      ~

      The first day of school finally arrived, delayed for two weeks by a teachers’ strike that I didn’t understand. At five minutes before seven, the gymnasium was packed, teeming with brown-faced children and pale-faced teachers. I stood with my back against the concrete under a sign in thick black marker posted on the wall that said Mrs. Waters, Third Grade, Section 8. My heart skipped a beat at the sight of the thirty-five students gathered around me, a surging swarm of curiosity and anticipation in a rainbow range of Bronx skin tones. I smiled at them. Some of them smiled back. Others stared, wide-eyed, like deer caught in the headlights.

      “Welcome to the zoo,” I heard someone to my right say. I turned to see a short, squat man with a handlebar mustache, about ten years my senior, wearing a wrinkled off-white short-sleeve shirt. A blue and tan striped tie dangled at his neck. With a sinister smile, he waved his palm in mock blessing over his students, who, unlike mine, stood at attention in a straight line. The sign on the wall behind him said Mr. Frascatore, Fourth Grade, Section 1.

      “It’s pretty noisy and crowded in here, all right,” I said, trying to be pleasant.

      “An extension of the neighborhood.” With a look of scorn on his face, he tipped his head toward the heavy-duty wire mesh covering the towering gymnasium windows along one wall. “Better be careful out there. You could get punched in the face at any time for no reason at all, or worse yet, stabbed in the gut. My name’s Anthony, by the way.”

      “I’m Sylvia.” I paused, then added, “I live within walking distance of here. We moved here this summer.”

      He snorted and dipped his head toward my students. “They are trainable. But don’t expect them to learn anything.” Then he smiled, exposing square, yellow teeth.

      An ice cube settled in the pit of my stomach. I crossed my arms and looked down, kicked at an invisible piece of dirt on the floor. I wanted to say something, but didn’t. I was new, and it was my first day of school. And, having grown up in a family that was averse to arguing, I’d never developed a knack or an appetite for overt disagreement. I turned away from his negative energy, tried not to engage with him or make it seem in any way that I agreed with his reprehensible views.

      “Don’t listen to him.” It was the teacher to my left, a sturdy, bosomy middle-aged woman. The reddish-blond hair tied up in a loose bun on the top of her head contributed to the confident look she had of someone who belonged here and knew her way around. She rolled her eyes in Anthony Frascatore’s direction and reached out to shake my hand. “My name’s Bonnie. Bonnie Goldmann. I teach third grade, too. Welcome to P.S. 457. Looks like we made it. We lost a couple of weeks because of the strike, but it could have been worse.”

      “What was the strike about?” I asked.

      “Depends on who you ask. I support